A Rat In the Asylum Part 2
by Tidwell
Summary: You play the record backwards, you get a whole different message. Afternoon musings at Mayfield.


**Disclaimer: House belongs to David Shore and Fox.**

A Rat In the Asylum (Part 2)

_Number nine...number nine..._

Squeezing his eyes shut, he paused in mid step to fall back against the wall...and listen.

_Number nine...number nine..._

His limbs were heavy, stomach full. He felt good. Sated. Lunch with the crazies had been edible for a change.

_Number nine..._

Woah. Yes. It was blowing his mind! When was the last time he thought about _this_?

_turn me on dead man_

Yeah, when you played the record backwards, that is exactly what you heard.

_Number nine..._

It was the drugs talking again. Those pills they gave him in the little plastic cup this morning were doing their job well. He felt calm, happy. Blitzed.

_Late at night when your parents are asleep, you sneak the phonograph from under your bed. You stare at the boxy thing for a long time because it's magical and you respect that. _

_This is the ritual, the special secret no one else will ever know. The record is on the spindle where you left it the night before. Place the needle at the end of the disc, near the run-out groove, then spin it backwards. It's like the religion they are always after you to find. Well, hallelujah, you finally did. Careful now. Easy. Use two fingers. Lightly, lightly. The sound traveling from the grooves to the speakers is so different from anything you've ever heard. It's what you imagine being on drugs is like._ _The Beatles were on drugs, weren't they? You don't know and there is no one you can ask. You just know they're cool. The coolest guys in the world_.

And then...BAM! Out of the blue it makes sense.

_turn me on dead man_

He shuddered, moaned a little, then used Amber's invisible Dri-mark to wipe out the memory. It was interesting but not what he wanted to think about now.

_Number nine, number nine. _

Mmmm, better. Love that round english tone. Perfect diction. The voice brought to mind tea time in the afternoon. Emerald green fields. He didn't like tea, although sometimes he would drink coffee from a red cup. The one in his office. _That place you never see no mo'._

Being jostled made him mad. Someone was shaking him, one of the crazies if the moistness of the palm and the clumsy (retarded!) grip of the fingers against his collarbone was any indication.

He grunted, shrugged his assailant off.

_Shake, shake, shake._

_Number nine..._

Ah, he knew who was pestering him now. He recognized this particular crazy by his smell: B.O., Ben-Gay and Tic-Tacs.

"Your mother's dead. At the funeral, you squeezed her left tit before they closed the coffin. Then you scurried off into the ladies room to jerk off." His eyes popped open. "How come you did that, Sol? You cra-zy or something?"

Sol's lower lip was many times larger and wetter than his top one. When he cried, it trembled and shivered like a balloon full of Jell-O.

"I din't mean it." Sol was losing his hair, a few brownish-gray wisps remained on top of his head like strands of thread left behind at a sewing bee. It was something else to goad him about. Next time. Now Sol was sobbing and shuffling down the hall, as fast as his slippered feet could take him.

_Number nine..._

Oh, group was good. Yummy delish with a cherry on top. It's there he learned lots of wonderfully fun stuff about the crazies, stuff he could put to good use.

Lil' T & A, the shrink with the ginormous boobs, warned him about attacking people with their weaknesses.

Warnings didn't hold a lot of weight in Gregland.

_You remember the inanities but the important stuff like the last visit from Cuddy and the phone calls from Wilson...they kind of slip your mind._

With a groan and a grimace, he reached into his trouser pocket and fingered Amber's invisible Dri-Mark. It was smooth and warm like the handle of a gun or the deep curves of a woman's body. Like a faithful lover, it was good at keeping secrets.

At night he used it to scribble those secrets on the walls and floors of his cell. The letters glowed and pulsed and made him happy. But in the morning all that was left of them was a pile of gold-brown silt on the floor by his bed. With great care, he would gather it up and pour it in his pocket. At breakfast, he sprinkled it in his oatmeal to give himself strength to start the day.

He drifted a bit, then made his eye into slits. Cranial, the orderly with a skull like a Cro-Magnon, stared at him from across the corridor. Good, let him stare, let him get all the details right, from the close cropped hair to the sweat pants and slippers. Inmate Greg is in the howwwwse.

_And the Dri-mark is safe and deep within the well of your pocket. _

The feel of the wall at his back was reassuring; it was a sturdy, stalwart friend. He didn't like leaving it too often, since he was alone then, nothing to lean on except the cane and the cane was wrong. It was a hollow aluminum thing, dull silver. The cane of a cripple.

_Number nine..._

With some hesitation, he pushed off the wall and passed Cranial, giving him a doff of an imaginary cap. Down the hall, two lefts and one right. Crazy alert. _Red faced loon babbling about stirrups and a bonfire. Shakespeare Lady quoting the bard, doing a two-step and do-si-do to the rhythm of the words. _

Step-thump. Afternoon walks through these corridors took longer and were not as pleasant as his morning excursions. The crazies got in his way, vying for space, almost knocking each other over in an effort to get where? To group? To the dining hall? To the dayroom, where they could meet and prove to each other who was more insane? Getting nowhere fast wasn't on his to-do list.

Crazy he was not. Troubled, tired, yeah, he was that.

A touch on his shoulder made him jerk forward, almost losing his balance. He swayed and leaned hard on his cane as the culprit made herself known.

"I'm sorry." Lil' T & A smiled up at him. She was so little. He could eat her for dinner, starting at her mouth and working his way down. _Ah...yeah._ What would they do to him if he tried? He'd already been drugged, He'd spent days confined to his quarters. Ummm, what else could they possibly--

"It's nice out today," she was saying. "Would you like to spend some time in the yard?"

He liked the yard. It was where the crazies could be themselves while he observed. The dayroom was okay but they were docile in there, pouring all their concentration into fingerpainting, silly putty sculptures and Nose Picking 101. Outside was where the real action was.

Silently he followed her and made up his mind to remember everything about the yard today: the games the crazies played, how the moose brained orderlies snickered to each other on the sly, the dimple in T & A's chin. Noticing things was cool; it was the remembering that was tough. He wrapped his fingers around the Dri-Mark in his pocket and relief flooded over him. His helpmate wouldn't let him down. _This_ was important, a little piece of himself that had yet to be chipped away.

* * *

In the yard, Tomas, a former executive for IBM, was playing in the grass, rolling over and over, getting the smell of the earth on himself like a puppy would. Every once in a while he would 'yip' and raise his arms to the sky.

He was an idiot. So was Marcus, who was pacing and telling stories to a group of young 'uns, who had died when he drove their school bus into a ravine. Marcus escaped unscathed, except for becoming even stupider than he was before.

He knew all about them and wished he didn't. The memories of Cuddy's last visit or Wilson's jokey asides never stuck around this long and he wished they did.

Life wasn't fair.

In the corner stood the girl with the interesting hair. It was brown like chestnuts, with streaks of red underneath. His hands wanted to go there, to see if maybe there was some strange heat coming off her, a simmering, smoldering blaze. But Cranial and his ilk wouldn't like that. They'd pull him off her and lock him up, which was fine sometimes but not right now.

As usual, she played with a rag doll that looked like a dog had chewed it up and spit it out. He didn't know anything about her or her doll. She was not in his group.

"You should come over here and talk to me." She smiled when she spoke, brushing the doll's stringy hair with her fingers. Her overbite was interesting. "You got nothing to lose."

He took two long strides and stood over her. "Your hair looks like fire."

"It's not. See?" She dropped the doll and ran her fingers through her tresses. "See?"

"Can I touch?"

"Noooo. I'll scream."

"You don't like to be touched?"

"Touching can hurt. Do you like secrets?"

He tilted his head. "You have any?"

"No."

"You're lying."

"You're right. Now it's your turn."

"For what?"

"To answer a question."

"I thought I just did."

She waggled the doll at him. "What's in your pocket?"

In response, he took a step back and gripped the Dri-Mark so hard it was soon slick with his sweat.

"Now I've done it," she said to ragdoll. "I've hit a nerve."

He shivered, wishing he could call Wilson and plead with him to take him far away from this place, far away from everywhere. "I have to go." Her hair was on fire, little licks of flames scorched the air around her head; black clouds settled on her shoulders. "I have to go." He raised his voice so Lil' T & A could hear him. Ever attentive, she swiveled her head and smiled that smile that said it was time for more meds and some sleep.

"I'll trade you my doll for what's in your pocket," the girl was yelling. "You should give it to me. I'll take care of it for you."

He wondered, as T & A took his arm and gently guided him back to the wonderful world of Mayfield, what Fire Girl's words would sound like backwards.

Maybe next time Wilson visited he could bring a turntable and some old vinyl. They would set up on that scratched wooden table in the corner of the dayroom.

_turn me on, dead man_

Gently, he would place the needle down and, with two fingers, play each record from the end to the beginning, the secret messages in the grooves opening like shiny black flowers.

_number nine, number nine, number nine..._


End file.
